The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast on Tuesday Japan's economic growth to be 2.4% in 2021 from a year before, down 0.4 percentage points from its July estimate as the most recent wave of coronavirus infections further curtailed business activities in the world's third largest economy.
Global growth projection for 2021 was trimmed 0.1 point to 5.9%, reflecting forecast downgrades for advanced economies, partly due to longer-than-expected supply disruptions stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, and also for low-income developing countries struggling with the slow rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.
"The global recovery continues but the momentum has weakened, hobbled by the pandemic," IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath said in the latest World Economic Outlook report, while warning of the increasing divergence in economic prospects across countries on the back of large disparities in vaccine access and in policy support.